Wednesday, July 15, 2015

In one fell swoop, the KMT has rid itself of five vocal critics of the direction the party has taken in recent weeks We won’t know until the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) congress this coming Sunday whether Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), the prospective presidential candidate who has scared the bejeezus out of most of us—and out of many a KMT member—with her out-of-touch views on China, but already the party is taking measures to quiet the internal grumbling. Following President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) Orwellian take on Hung’s “one China, common interpretation,” the party announced today that it had sacked five of its members for being too critical of the KMT. Thus, rather than accept that Hung’s views are out of sync with the wishes of the majority of Taiwanese and will likely cost it both the presidency and its majority in the Legislative Yuan, the KMT is choosing to clamp down on internal dissent. My article, published today on Thinking Taiwan, continues here.